2123AFC060421 – The 411 of the 808
Read it online here, please. And please, when you visit there, use one of the social media links at the bottom of the page to share this post. Thank you! And remember, we now have a READER VIEW available, so share this link or this email often.
Exodus 24:7 – 7 Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
Hebrews 9:11-12 – 11 But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent [Tabernacle] (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), 12 he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
Mark 14:26 – 26 When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
E pili mau na pomaika‘i ia ‘oe a me ke akua ho’omaika‘i ‘oe, ʻŌmea! (May blessing always be with you and may God bless you, Beloved!) Say, how about that title up there? Kinda weird and mysterious, huh? Some of you – especially our members in Hawaiʻi – will know that 808 is the Area Code for Hawaiʻi. It is one of our “identity tags.” It’s on T-shirts, bumper stickers, TV ads, pretty much everywhere. Being part of the 808 is quite a blessing – you know, “living in Paradise” (despite many valid complaints it’s being paved over and turned under for more houses, condos, resorts, and “Big Box Stores”). I put it in the title today because I am one of those silly people that gets excited about numerical happenstances like February 1, 2021 being 2/1/21. Well, today is our 808th post! Who’dathunk? The other number, 411, is technically a slang term for information, the real skinny, and/or the way to find phone numbers – “Just dial 411.” Today’s post, then, is information about the 808th post which also happens to be information about the long-cherished Solemnity (special feast) that lots of us old folks call Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ. It is the official name for commemoration of the institution of the Eucharist – The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. We take a whole day to remember the Covenant the Lord made with Moses and The Chosen People, the Israelites.
In the reading from Deuteronomy, Moses reads the Book of the Covenant to them – The Law – as (in the same words and meanings) God has given it to him. There is an account in this passage of the holocausts and sacrifices of young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. He takes half of the blood from the sacrifices and splashes it on the altar of twelve pillars he has constructed for this offering. This sanctifies the pillars, the altar, and the offering. The other half he sprinkles on The People. This sanctifies The People, and their promise in response to the offering for the Covenant they will be bound to obey. We have commented in the past that “there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood.” (See Hebrews 9:22)
In the first Key Verse, you notice I included The People’s promise to be obedient. This is something they do over, and over, and over in the Old Testament. As you know quite well, they didn’t keep that promise long, and in fact went as far as they thought they could get in the opposite direction from God’s commands without having to be clobbered by a swift kick in the head to help them remember The Covenant. You know what happened. Here’s a direct quote from last week’s lesson. It bears repeating because we, Belovéd, are not that much different from The People when it comes to being obedient to The Law: “They witnessed it. They passed it down through generations. They wrote it into the Torah. God sent them Judges, and Prophets, and Kings, and Priests, and Rites, and Laws, and they really should have had it all ‘down pat,’ as we say. There shouldn’t be any questions such as ‘who is God and what did God do?’ It’s all right there in front of us for millennia.”
The Apostle Paul often pointed out that Jesus, the Christ and our High Priest (he is the Priest, the Sacrifice, and the Offering) sanctified his own Body and Blood by voluntarily sacrificing it “for the remission of sin” for all who would believe in him. The Apostle Paul outlines God’s Absolutely Perfect Plan for Salvation through the Absolutely Perfect Sacrifice of his Absolutely Perfect Son so as to make an Absolutely Perfect once-and-for-all expiation of sin. That’s a great word – expiation. Some ways to think about it are reparation, apology, recompense, penitence. It means the removal of guilt for sin as in paying a ransom, to “buy out of bondage” a prisoner or slave (of or to sin), to pay the penalty for whatever caused that bondage – like forgetting The Covenant. As The People evolved into The Nation of Israel, the rites for communion with God and for the expiation of sin also grew. The Tent of Meeting was eventually replaced by the Temple built by Solomon. It took a long while to get to that point; however, the basic process did not change. The Law was broken, an offering was required and presented for consecration, blood was shed, expiation was granted, and that lasted until the Law was broken again. No matter how often that cycle was repeated, the need for completing it never went away. Then God moved, and he fixed it.
To fix that cycle, God sent his Only Begotten Son to willingly shed his blood by entering “once for all into the sanctuary” and WHAM! Sin and the wages of sin – Death – were G O N E GONE – in the eyes and memory of God. There is still the breaking of The Law, but the blood has already been shed, the price has been paid, and we have the forgiveness of sins through the one and only Great High Priest. (Let us not forget that in Mosaic Law, the forgiveness received from God also came through the office of the Priesthood.) We can still ask God directly for forgiveness, but it is still through the office of our Great High Priest that forgiveness is available to those who repent, believe the Gospel, are baptized, and confess their sinfulness and sins, and seek and accept forgiveness. When the Apostle Paul says “then through the greater and perfect tent,” he is referring to the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. The Apostle Paul names the Tabernacle to be the Body of Christ and the Blood which he shed for our sins. This is THE perfect sacrifice, this pure and holy sacrifice – greatly exceeding all the sacrifices of sheep and rams and goats and bulls and pigeons and turtle doves and all of the blood they shed over and over up until the final, perfect, one-and-done sacrifice of Christ Jesus our Lord. Folks, that is some GOOD news!! It’s Good News because he accomplished that “with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.”
That is why every year about nine weeks after Easter we commemorate The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. We remember how he loved us to his death (↔ Music Link). He and he alone provides us with the expiation of our sins. Expiation means to remove something. In biblical terminology, it has to do with removal or eliminating guilt by means of paying a ransom or by offering an atonement. It means to pay the penalty for something often on behalf of someone else. Thus, the act of expiation removes the problem by paying for it in some way, in order to satisfy some demand. It is the concept of “PAID IN FULL” we have spoken of so often here.
To get an idea of how often this comes up, you can go to https://aloha-friday.org/ and in the search box in the right column and type in tide AND evil as seen here:
You will find quite a few posts that talk about the “advancing tide of evil” such as – 1046, 1143, 1337, 1346, 1743, 1750, 1813, 2023. You’ll also be able to use the same BOOLEAN search for tsunami AND evil. That “advancing tide” has arrived, and it’s a TOWERING TSUNAMI!! Here, in this 808th post, we remember why we remember what it is about Jesus’ Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection that makes us wholly holy and whole.
Maybe you noticed the teensy Key Verse I took from the Gospel. There is so much richness in the passage the Church chooses for this Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 14:12-26 ↔ Click Link), so why just that one?
A few years ago, that verse jumped right off the page at me and another of those “Oh yeah, no?” moments of epiphany happened: When they had sung the hymn … Jesus could SING!! In the realization of that fact I found another reason to believe in and to respect the humanity of Jesus. I love to sing, he sang, too. Note iT says, “the hymn.” The word in the Greek is ὑμνήσαντες (hymnēsantes). We don’t know for sure exactly what they would have sung, but most likely it was all or at least part of the Hallel, consisting of six psalms, from Psalm 113, to Psalm 118. I include that again this time because if we are commemorating the Body and Blood of Yeshua bar Yehosef, then it is fruitful to remember that with that Life, that Body and that Blood, Jesus could sing with his Apostles about the Steadfast Love of God as he resolutely headed of the Mount Olivet to meet his betrayer as planned.
You see, it really was an Absolutely Perfect Plan, and that’s the 411 on this 808. We love him because he first loved us (↔ Click Link). That Love is what gives us the Faith, the discernment, the patience and perseverance, and the humility to seek him (↔ Click Link) while he may be found so that we, too, may please him as sharers in the Body and Blood of Christ. We would not seek him if we had not the Faith that he truly exists because “without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” We seek – in joyful Faith – The Precious Body and Precious Blood (↔ Music Link) of the Bread of Life.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
Please pray with us here at Share-a-Prayer.
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
